Chapter 15
My mother stood in the foyer of her house, staring at me with a grin on her face as I took off my coat and hung it in the front closet. “Ooh, your belly popped a little while you were out of town.” She put her flat palm on my belly.
“Tell me about it. I was obviously so pregnant that Kaynaan’s grandmother and great aunt Gertie or Myrtie or somebody knew without us telling anybody.”
She threw her arm around my shoulder. “Well, come in and tell me all about it. You hungry? Do I need to feed my grandbaby?”
“No, I ate when I got home. I just want to lay down.”
“Go lay on the couch. I’mma grab my drink. You want a bottle of water?”
“Yes.” I went into her living room and stretched out of her sofa.
A few moments later, she came into the room and set a bottle of water on the cocktail table for me. She took a seat in the swivel chair.
“Well, my holiday started off so promising, then took a nosedive. How was your holiday?” I asked.
“Girl, my holiday, like yours, started off good. Next thing I knew, it went off the rails and turned into a shit show. I should’ve taken my future son-in-law up on his offer of spending Thanksgiving with him.”
I sucked my teeth. “I’m not sure if Kaynaan is your future son-in-law, lady. Especially if his snooty behind grandmother has anything to say about it.”
“You wanna tell your story first?”
“No. I want to hear your story. I can’t believe I missed the family drama. Who was cutting up?” I asked.
“So, I told you that Channing was coming.”
“Did he come?”
“He did. And you know Channing. He’s good looking and seems to have his stuff together, if you don’t know his issues.”
“Yeah.”
“And you know your cousin Faychon. She has those Cousin Faith from Soul Food tendencies.”
I giggled. “She does.” She did. Faychon was the female cousin that everybody who knew better kept their men away from.
Faychon was non-discriminant when it came to men.
She liked men, and she didn’t care if they were otherwise attached or not.
A hoop hated to see her coming, because there was never a time that she wasn’t going to take her shot. “She flirted with Channing?”
“He was one of the very few men who was here who wasn’t related to her by blood, so the pickings were slim.
But yes, she flirted with him. With no remorse and definitely with no couth, as his girlfriend was right by his side.
Faychon was so disrespectful, I had second-hand embarrassment.
Hell, everybody did. And Channing’s little girlfriend?
She was so little and petite. So pretty—soft-spoken and polite as she wanted to be.
You could just tell that she wanted everybody to like her.
But I don’t care how good of an impression you’re trying to make.
With a person like Faychon hovering around your man, at some point, anybody would lose their cool. ”
“She lost her cool?” I sat up.
“She lost her entire cool. This itty-bitty thing, couldn’t have been no taller than five feet tall, stepped right up to Faychon.” She eyed me. “Which you already know Faychon is part on her mammy’s side, because we don’t have on our side.”
“Okay,” I said through my laughter. My mother knew good and well that her brother, my uncle Frankie, was bigger than your average bear. Faychon got all that height and girth from him.
“Anyway, the girlfriend, Anyae or Ahnway or something, was nice enough to ask Faychon if she could speak to her outside. You know my niece likes to throw her weight around and try to intimidate people. Faychon laughed in the girl’s face, then told her yeah.
” She sighed. “This is a sidebar—I was so thankful that little girl took her outside and didn’t do what she did to her inside my house. ”
“What did she do to her?”
“You know how they say, the bigger they are, the harder they fall?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the way that Anyae put the mitts to Faychon, her big ass practically left a hole in the driveway. We were like, timber! That little girl beat the brakes off Faychon’s big, bully ass.
I don’t know how she did it. Maybe she started at the ankles and worked her way up.
Maybe she was doing karate and cah-ray-zee.
I don’t know. All I know is that when the dust settled, Anyae was the last one standing. ”
I cracked up. I was holding my stomach. “Mama!” I cried in laughter. “Mama, please. Stop talking.”
“I know family is supposed to stick together, and technically, that little girl should’ve been outnumbered.
She shouldn’t have been allowed to beat Faychon’s ass the way she did in front of us.
” She took a long sip from her drink. “But that’s how you can truly know how your family really feels about you.
Start a fight at a family gathering and see if they jump in or let you get mollywopped. ”
“Well, none of the aunts like her because she’s been with most of their men,” I reminded her.
“So why the men didn’t help her?”
“Maybe the sex was bad.”
We both cracked up.
“Was this before or after y’all ate, Mama?”
“Before.”
“How did you get everybody calmed down?”
“I didn’t. Channing came out of the house with Cecilia and Rodney hot on his heels. He got right in Anyae’s face and started blessing her out. In front of the whole family and the neighbors, too. Because remember, Anyae defeated the wicked witch of the South Side in my driveway.”
“Oh. Y’all ghetto, though,” I teased.
“That’s what Channing said. He told that little girl he didn’t bring her in front of his family to act like, and I quote, a trash ass ho.
She must’ve still been fired up from taking down the wicked witch, because she slapped hot fire from Channing’s ass.
He looked like he wanted to kill her, but Rodney jumped in front of his son.
He tried to calm Channing, while Cecilia tried to calm Anyae. It was too much.
“Me and your grandmother left them out there causing a scene. We went in the kitchen and made to-go plates for everybody. At that point, I wanted everybody out.”
“I can’t believe your Thanksgiving went like that.”
“It did,” she assured me. “Please tell me your holiday was better than mine.”
I told her about my Thanksgiving. I included everything from how we arrived at his grandparents’ estate to the smell of nothing, all the way to his fight with his grandmother before we boarded the jet.
“I feel like I’m coming between him and his grandmother.
Like everything is all bad, and she doesn’t even know the worst of the situation yet.
She’s this mad when she thinks Kaynaan’s the father.
What is she gonna think when she finds out he’s not?
I can’t let him put his relationship with his grandmother on the line for me and a baby that’s not even his. ”
“Kaynaan is a man, Wyn. He doesn’t need you to fight the battle with his grandmother for him.
I don’t think this is really even about you.
It sounds to me like it’s about her trying to control the family’s image.
This is probably a long-standing situation that just came to a head with the news about the baby.
You didn’t talk to him after it happened? ”
“No. I pretended to be asleep on the jet. The thought of him defending me and then having to admit that he’s not even biologically related to this baby makes me feel so .
. . I don’t know, cringe. She’s never gonna look at me like I’m anything except a low-budget baby mama that Kaynaan rescued from a life of poverty and lack. ”
She stared at me. “Is that what she’s gonna think of you or what you think of you?”
“Mama.” I sighed.
She held up her hands in surrender. “Look, I’m just saying. You’re putting a whole bunch of words in his grandmother’s mouth.”
I didn’t respond. My mother didn’t understand. His family was snooty. They would never see me as his equal. They would always see me as being beneath him. Beneath them.
“Before you make any big decisions about the relationship, talk to him. I know you have the tendency to ice people out. You wanna leave them before they leave you. Talk to him, Wyn. It’s obvious to anybody with eyes that you like him.
And he has stars in his eyes for you. Don’t throw it away on a story you’re making up in your mind without talking to him. ”
Of course, I didn’t take my mother’s advice.
Rather than talk to Kaynaan while my mind was still cluttered and unsure, I avoided and ignored him.
It was easy to do, because the Christmas season had begun, and I had a ton of custom orders.
Most of them were from corporations that loved to give out the same little trinket to all their associates or special customers.
Water bottles blinged out with the logo or visuals seemed to be all the rage.
I had orders for three hundred water bottles from one company alone.
The first time I ghosted him, Kaynaan let me rock for two weeks. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this time around, I only got three days before he showed up at my studio. I let him in after he bypassed the doorbell and banged on my door like he was the damn cops.
He walked into my studio and made a beeline for my worktable.
He pulled up one of the stools that was usually reserved for customers to get comfortable and discuss design ideas.
My heart was beating double time, because I knew I was wrong for the way I’d been treating him—not responding to his texts and hiding in the back of my apartment the two times he stopped by.
I knew he didn’t deserve the treatment, but I didn’t know how to handle the feelings I was feeling.